As previously described in meetings of the Clearing Advisory Group and the FIA Clearing and Technology Committee, CME's next enhancement to our clearing trade management systems involves Block Trades (also called Wholesale Trades), and Exchange-For-Physical (EFP),Exchange-For-Risk (EFR), and Exchange-For-Swap (EFS) trades.  We are targeting an early June launch date.

Generically, we are referring to all of these transaction types as PNT's -- Privately Negotiated Transactions -- since trades are directly executed between two parties -- neither on a trading floor nor on an electronic system.  For simplicity within this document, we will refer to all of these transactions simply as blocks and EFP's.

With this enhancement, the existing 3270-based user interface for handling futures block trades and EFP trades will be eliminated.   Similarly, option block trades will no longer be handled through TES.  Instead, block and EFP trades will be processed within the Front-End Clearing (FEC) browser-based user interface.  The change in user interface is the least part of the enhancements associated with the new system, however...

Revision 1 of this advisory, published on April 22, (a) corrects the location on the main TREX block where the byte indicating the trade source is provided -- it is in position 164 not position 166, and (b) provides a link to a file of sample TREX messages.

Complete text of Clearing House Advisory 04-60...